India seeks deeper ties with US in joint fight against narcotics: MEA

The Ministry of External Affairs on Wednesday said operational cooperation between India and the United States on counter-narcotics has “surged” in recent years and New Delhi is looking to deepen this joint effort.

Responding to a query at the weekly media briefing, MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said that joint India–US operations have helped dismantle several major transnational drug networks.

He described counter-narcotics as a “very good” area of collaboration, noting that it is likely to be strengthened further.

Cooperation has intensified since the creation of the India–US Counternarcotics Working Group in 2020. Its fifth meeting, held in October last year, saw both sides adopt measures to bolster their response to shared challenges, Jaiswal said. Preparations for the sixth meeting are currently underway.

More from World

Deadline diplomacy: Trump’s Gaza-style playbook faces a tougher test in Ukraine truce push Georgia drops landmark case accusing Trump, allies of 2020 election meddling

”We have a strong mechanism of sharing information between the US and India, and these have resulted in key seizures and arrests,” the MEA spokesperson added.

India has a ”very strong collaboration, and not just strong collaboration, institutional collaboration with the United States, and these are based on long-standing agreements that we have between the two countries,” he said.

And, operational cooperation between the two countries has ”surged in the last several years, with significant two-way interdictions, and coordinated enforcement”.

With inputs from agencies